So we’re told that Denis Villeneuve’s Dune has the Royal Assent of House Corrino for Christopher Walken to claim the Golden Lion Throne as Padishah Emperor Shaddam IV. He will probably be checking the time left to premiere on his gold watch.

Maybe the second part helps to suspend my repetitive discomfort caused by Villeneuve’s über-distillation of the source material. Lynch’s version is the one I truly became enamored with from the first frames of the intro where Virginia Madsen shines as princess Irulan.

Dune, in my inner cinema, must be fiercely colourful, much brighter than Villeneuve’s dark and pale world,

just as Harkonnen’s palace on Giedi Prime calls for sybaritic luxury instead of industrial gloom

(Lynch’s aesthetics again wins the day despite Villeneuve’s negations thereof). The book says it all.